Lloyd’s, the world’s leading marketplace for insurance and reinsurance has today published a new report on how the rapid evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology will impact the cyber risk landscape, requiring businesses to build greater resilience to these evolving threats.
The report – Generative AI: Transforming the cyber landscape – focuses on cyber as one of the most complex and critical risks threatening national security and businesses today, with the dynamics of the risk landscape already posing many challenges.
The emergence of AI, particularly unrestricted advanced GenAI models, is set to reshape the cyber landscape as it augments both threat actor and defensive capabilities.
Cyber insurance has a key role to play in helping businesses and broader society understand and manage this ever-evolving threat. It is important that businesses and the insurance industry take proactive steps to manage the potential changes to the threat landscape.
Despite the advanced capabilities of GenAI technologies and applications of Large Language Models (LLMs) to cybercrime, material impacts on the cyber threat landscape have so far been minimal. This is due to the industry’s safety mechanisms and effectiveness of AI model governance and cost and hardware barriers which have prevented widespread misuse by threat actors.
However, as they become more accessible they pose an increasing risk, creating potential opportunities for threat actors to use the tools in malicious ways, leading to harm or damage for people, property, and tangible and intangible assets.
The impact of GenAI on the cyber landscape is likely to increase the frequency, severity, and diversity of smaller scale cyber attacks, which will grow over the next 12-24 months, followed by a plateauing as security and defensive technologies catch up to counterbalance their impacts.
“Lloyd’s has been exploring the complex and varied risks associated with AI since 2016 and its developments present both opportunities and risks for businesses and the insurance industry. When considering the threat landscape, we must stay responsive to these rapidly changing technologies, learn from them, and seek to make the most of the efficiencies they bring. Generative AI is not the first, and won’t be the last, disruptive technology to impact the cyber threat landscape, so it is critical that business improve their risk mitigation, security and defence technologies, as well as seek appropriate risk transfer today, more than ever before.” – Dr Kirsten Mitchell-Wallace, Director of Portfolio Risk Management, Lloyd’s
Lloyd’s continues to work with governments, regulators, security experts and insurers to understand and underwrite the risks associated with AI, partnering with industry, engaging policy makers, and supporting sustainable innovation.